As a related-art steering control device, there is known a steering control device for generating a steering wheel return torque by a motor in order to improve steering wheel return characteristics at the time when a driver releases a steering wheel from his/her hand at low vehicle speed (for example, Patent Literature 1).
In Patent Literature 1, polarity determination is performed to determine that a steering wheel is in a return state when a rotation direction of a motor and an input direction of a steering torque are different from each other, and whether or not to apply a return torque is selected. In order to prevent the occurrence of a phenomenon that a driver receives a force from the steering wheel in an unintended direction, namely, a so-called unintended steering of the steering wheel, which is caused even when the driver slightly returns the steering wheel in the steering-holding state (in the state in which the driver does not steer the steering wheel greatly during straight travel or the like), whether or not to apply the return torque is selected based on the magnitude of the steering torque. As a result, the return torque becomes a pulsed ON/OFF signal, and steering wheel return control using this signal becomes pulsed control, which is transmitted to the steering wheel as impact caused by an abrupt change in a pulsed short period, thus leading to a feeling of discomfort when the steering of the steering wheel is held or slightly held. Accordingly, to deal with this problem, in Patent Literature 1, it is proposed to subject the return torque to low-pass filtering. Due to the low-pass filtering, the pulsed change in return torque is made gentle to reduce a steering feeling of discomfort.